Racists for Obama?

So no, we’re probably not talking about this fool in the image above – but apparently some people who many would deem ‘racist’ are on the fence – and even leaning towards Obama.

Huh?

New polling and a trickle of stories from the battleground states suggest that Sen. Barack Obama’s coalition includes one unlikely group: white voters with negative views of African Americans.

Race has become the elephant in the room of the 2008 presidential campaign, with Obamaâ€™s prospect of becoming the first black president drawing some Americans closer to him while pushing others away. At times, the contest has slipped into a familiar dynamic of allegations of racism and outraged denial – but it’s also challenged some easy assumptions about race, racism and prejudice.

â€œWhat you see is itâ€™s perfectly possible to hold a negative view of at least one aspect of African Americans and yet simultaneously prefer Obama,â€ said Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Racial feelings are not as cut and dried – not as black and white – as people often say.”

….

Anecdotes from across the battlegrounds suggest that thereâ€™s a significant minority of prejudiced white voters who will swallow hard and vote for the black man.

“I wouldnâ€™t want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but Iâ€™m voting for Obama,” the wife of a retired Virginia coal miner, Sharon Fleming, told the Los Angeles Times recently.

One Obama volunteer told Politico after canvassing the working-class white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are â€¦ undecided. They would call him a [racial epithet] and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”

The notion that there might be “racists for Obama,” as one Democrat called them, comes against the backdrop of a country whose white voters largely accept the notion of a black president.

So, what I’m taking away from this is that our country is so fucked-up right now that people who are openly racist are at least considering voting for a black man.